What is wrong with you? How many times do you have to say the same thing? Please answer one simple question: do you think capturing or killing bin Laden before Thursday would have stopped the London attack?

The White House has no interest in catching OBL. President Bush has already said that -- he doesn't spend much time thinking about OBL.

Face it -- the Bush Administration needs a bogey man to keep people living in fear, so they can sell all their policies because "9/11 Changed Everything (tm)."

A serious search for him won't happen unless Democrats take back Congress in 2006.

PS -- I agree with the other poster, that it won't stop more terrorist attacks. But as far as Justice for 9/11 goes, we need to catch OBL. But the idea that just catching him will stop AQ is ridiculous in my opinion.

identical ill-thought-out posts do we have to see from Reed Hunt?  Seriously, Mr. Hunt, if you don't have anything to say, no one's forcing you to post.

The tragic fact is that at this point in time, the invasion of Pakistan that would be necessary to capture OBL would probably do more harm than good.    Musharraf isn't even letting us cross the Pakistani border in "hot pursuit" of Taliban fighters -- and were he to authorize us to invade Pakistan, he might be overthrown by those in Pakistan that are even more sympathetic to the Taliban and OBL than Musharraf himself --- putting Pakistan's nuclear arsenal at the disposal of a terrorist state.

(and, of course, an invasion of Pakistan is no guarantee that OBL would be caught.)

In the wake of 9-11, we had sufficient international support to really go after OBL, including in sanctuaries in Pakistan.  Hundt, of course, was one of the cheerleaders in the effort to divert resources and effort from al Qaeda to Iraq.... and its really annoying to see him cheerleading for a much riskier military campaign to get OBL at this point.

I don't have a problem with Reed's repetitive questions.  I have asked the same thing repeatedly since Bush disengaged from the Al-Qaeda hunt and turned to attack Saddam.  I also keep on asking the question because no one has given any kind of plausible answer, as of yet, in reply.

Once again, why don't we wait and find out who was responsible for the London bombings before we assign that responsibility to al Qaeda? All we are doing is helping bin Laden build up his street creds. If the British police find that al Qaeda and/or bin Laden was behind the bombings, then is the time to ask such questions.

Eventually, the degree of separation of every one of the billion Muslims on the planet from the terrorist network will be of the order of unity, and at that point, every disaffected person will be directly able to enter the jihad. Once this happens, terrorism will be a regular feature of life instead of a sporadic series of events. What saves us right now is the difficulty of converting the enthusiasm and intent into effective jihad while the impulse lasts. When everyone knows personally someone who took part in the jihad, that barrier will have gone.

It is of the utmost urgency to take every known terrorist out of circulation, far more important than any other security task, in my opinion.

The allusion to Kent State is very cute.  What a stitch.

For his part, Bush had his back covered at Gleneagles by an aircraft carrier moored off the coast of Scotland, in case of just such of an event.  Never know who you might need to bomb on a moments notice.  Clearly that aircraft carrier could have been more fruitfully deployed elsewhere along with a state-of-the-art, satellite-based dialysis machine tracking system. Very clever, those henchmen.

By contrast, where I live the leading cause of death is still heart attack, by many orders of magnitude over terrorism.  There are 70,000 deaths in the US every year from diabetes alone.  Another 85,000 from alcohol, 16,500 from alcohol-related vehicle crashes.  I have to assume a good many of these are preventable. Granted, not as sexy as grandstanding voodoo about the Bearded Evil One, but at least we know where these people live.

I still remember the sick sneers: "Khomeini issues a fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie's head, and see what happens: Khomeini's dead and Rushdie's alive. Such a bunch of losers, those ayatollahs!"

Today one hears the same sneers from a different corner: "Osama dead or alive! 4 years on, we're sinking in Iraq and Osama's still making home videos."

The line between superpower and world-class buffoon has never been so thin.

I'm pretty sure that the G8, the European Union, NATO members or whatever grouping you want to use, are, indeed helping.  They just have a diferent perspective than we do.  For one thing, most of them deal with it  as a law enforcement issue, and that's a rational position to take.  Also, their populations are less tolerant of war and these are democracies, so they have to do what their people want.

They haven't taken our approach, but that doesn't mean they aren't helping. 

I think Bush wisely decided to downplay the hunt for bin Laden when it became clear that a quick nab was not going to happen....

And, I think that Bush downplayed the hunt for bin Laden when he realized that the forces needed to "get" bin Laden would preclude invading Iraq, which was his number one goal. I also don't think Bush ever had an intention to really "get" bin Laden, but he did need to look like a macho "war President", so we sorta, kinda, almost invaded Pakistan to do so. That act established Bush as a real man's man in the "war on terror" and allowed him to find American support for his planned invasion of Iraq.

ANd why, rea, should we attack Venezuela? Is Chavez amassing troops - and lots of big boats - to invade America? Let me guess: he's gonna land in Florida during a hurricane, when no one's looking, and storm up the coast to Washington.
    Or is it that he's a 'commie', or a 'dictator', and you desire 'regime change'. Well, the US already tried it once, with a little help from the Venezualen old guard, and the coop failed. It seems Chavez enjoys some popular support, percentage-wise, more support than GWB.

Bush didn't fail to capture bin Laden in Tora Bora, he didn't want to. Pakistan's support is essential to the Taliban. And Musharraf would die if he let us take bin Laden out of Pakistan. AQ Khan, a hero in Pakistan, but the biggest nuclear proliferator in the last decade, receives no punishment, and Bush asks for none, for the same reason: Pakistan has 130,000,000 Muslims, and nukes. Bush was afraid to stir up a hornets nest.

The problem with getting the Muslim world to modernize their religion is not a military one. Contrary to what Bush has stated, it is not a war, but a dipomatic, intelligence, and PR job. Bush knows this which is the conundrum he had in 2002 after bin Laden's escape. How to change the subject without seeming all squishy and nuanced like the liberals. His answer: war in Iraq. 

I think the previous comment is poorly worded, but I do find myself in agreement with the sentiment. Mr. Hundt, I agree with your premise, and at least partially with your solution. But you've been banging this drum continuously for the past week, and I'm not sure if new comments are really informing anyone of anything.

It's kind of like complaining, "how many tax cuts will the administration push before they finally raise revenue or cut spending?" It's a valid question. But the efficacy of raising it every day is limited.